Africville and the 1917 Halifax Explosion

Evidence shatters myths about community ‘missed’ by blast, ignored by authorities

A 1918 Map of the devastated areas of Halifax. (Nova Scotia Archives)

Shortly after 9 a.m. on Dec. 6, 1917 a vessel carrying munitions exploded in the Narrows of Halifax Harbour, devastating much of the north end of the city. Two popular myths have emerged from that event: Africville, a black neighbourhood on the shores of Bedford Basin, escaped destruction, sheltered by the heights of the Halifax peninsula; and, following the explosion, Halifax Relief authorities deliberately denied reconstruction aid to Africville. Although mutually-exclusive, neither myth bears close scrutiny.

The Halifax Herald front page, Friday December 7, 1917, the day after the Halifax explosion.

Documentation appears to confirm the first notion. Summary Reports on Property Damage: Africville, city assessment rolls used by the Halifax Relief Commission to record damage to properties, indicate Africville residences were untouched by the explosion.

Isolated from context, documents can be misleading; these summary reports certainly were. Taken alone, not only do they suggest that disaster in Africville was averted, these lists address only property damage, not injuries or fatalities. When the explosion’s impact on Africville is further explored, evidence emerges that casualties, as well as extensive property damage, were suffered by residents of this black neighbourhood on that December morning.

Among the 1,963 dead in the city were four black residents of Africville: Esther Roan, 58, a respected midwife; James B. Allison, 40, a cooper by trade, originally from Hammonds Plains; Charles H. Simonds, 20, a labourer and native of Halifax. The two male victims were probably at work in Halifax when the explosion occurred, a safe assumption given the hour of the detonation. Roan, a well-known midwife in Halifax’s Black community, might have been attending a birth in the city’s north end at that time. The fourth fatality was a child, eight year-old Aldora, daughter of Charles and Laura Andrews.

It is in this child’s death that one first notes injuries and confirmation of property damages in that waterside community. Unlike the other three victims, Aldora Andrews was at home when she was killed. Both parents were there with her and suffered minor injuries in the blast. Laura’s arm was broken and Charles was listed as having injuries to his back and leg. The family’s house was particularly hard-hit. According to the Halifax Relief Committee inspector who visited them, the Andrews’ home was “so badly damaged that it was hardly fit to live in.” He continued: “Has lost nearly everything . . . Glass for windows and repairs to roof needed. Clothing, boots etc. needed and an order of food.” Based on the inspector’s Dec. 20, 1917 description of the property, located, he said, in “Africville-first part,” it seems the Andrews house was east of the unpaved extension of Gottingen Street that led into Africville. Given its proximity to the black community and the racial character of its residents, the inspector reasonably assumed the property was located in Africville. Relief authorities, on the other hand, failed to include the property in their summary report, believing it fell beyond neighbourhood boundaries defined by white officialdom at city hall and expressed in municipal assessment records.

One part of the Summary Reports on Property Damage: Africville, from the Halifax explosion. (Nova Scotia Archives)

There are additional indications of damage to Africville occurring that December morning. In his 1920 doctoral thesis, a study of the explosion, Samuel H. Prince described the main rail line northward from Halifax’s North Street Depot along the harbour and around the shore of the Bedford Basin as impassable due to the Dec. 6 explosion. There were “three miles of track buried in debris,” Prince reported, and he noted that it remained that way for two days. Three miles from the North Street Depot would have taken one almost to Rockingham Station, suggesting that Africville, midway between these two points, must have been under an intense barrage of flying rubble in the immediate aftermath of the explosion.

Dr. Willis B. Moore, a member of a medical relief team recruited from physicians, surgeons and nurses in Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley, confirmed this, reporting that his train had to halt as it approached Africville at 3:45 on the afternoon of the explosion. Describing the damage and disorientation he witnessed among the community’s population, he wrote, “As we neared the city, and viewed the desolate looking little Africville . . . we were beginning to realize that we were approaching a scene, the like of which probably none of us had ever witnessed.”

Minutes of the City School Board substantiated Dr. Moore’s report. Those records for Dec. 28, 1917 stated that with an expenditure of about $100, Africville School could reopen; a small amount, perhaps, but sufficient to replace windows and provide roofing materials. Thus, official sources tell of damage to a house inhabited by the Andrews family, presumably just beyond the eastern extremity of the Black community, and to its school several hundred metres to the west.

One part of the Summary Reports on Property Damage: Africville, from the Halifax explosion. (Nova Scotia Archives)

Clearly there are discrepancies between the summary reports on damage to Africville and a variety of other sources. The solution resides in the massive collection of documents generated by relief agencies, the same source for the misleading summary records on property damage in Africville. An exhaustive search of these records provides evidence that Africville experienced considerable damage in the 1917 explosion. Moreover, these documents record communications between relief officials and residents concerning compensation for those damages.

Contrary to the Summary Reports on Property Damage: Africville, the Relief Commission’s minutes of Nov. 8, 1918 indicate that the Africville Baptist church, located next to the community’s school, was severely damaged by the explosion. In those minutes the commission’s finance committee was authorized to establish a credit of $400 in favour of the trustees of the recently-erected church “on account of their total Real Estate claim.” By mid-October 1919, that credit for repairs had been adjusted upwards to $575.

The second document is more extensive, an oversized ledger comprised of hundreds of pages. Entitled Index B, this volume contains an alphabetic listing of names accompanied by file numbers issued over the period 1917-20. “This is believed to be an index to returns made by persons who lost property in the Explosion and compensation given to them,” according to experts at the provincial depository. It is not possible for archivists to be more specific, for documentary holdings are incomplete: The Halifax Relief Commission periodically vetted records before any remaining papers were finally deposited at the Nova Scotia Archives. This important ledger does, nonetheless, add a new dimension to our knowledge of Africville and the Halifax Explosion and, like the Nov. 8 minutes, calls into doubt the summary reports on Africville issued by the Relief Commission.

Thirty-two residents of Africville, representing 27 families enumerated in the Summary Reports on Property Damage: Africville, appear in the pages of Index B. In all but five cases, these file notations continue throughout the four years covered by this ledger. Thus, there is a paper trail between virtually every Africville family and the Relief Commission beginning in December 1917 and running through to 1920.

Officers walk through the rubble as Halifax begins to take stock and prepare to rebuild. (File)

The Dec. 20, 1917 report by the Relief Committee’s inspector, the City School Board’s minutes recorded one week later, and the Relief Commission’s November 1918 notation regarding the community’s church corroborate Dr. Moore’s assertion: Although buildings in the community remained standing, Africville sustained damages in the Halifax Explosion. Importantly, Index B indicates residents there, like others in Halifax, sought compensation from the Relief Commission in order to rebuild their community.

Although documents exist proving individual residents of Africville and its church had continuing communications with relief authorities regarding compensation, charges have been levelled that the community itself was excluded purposely from post-explosion reconstruction. “Rebuilding efforts bypassed Africville,” journalist Jon Tattrie wrote. “There was relief aplenty after the Halifax Explosion on Dec. 6, 1917, but not across the tracks,” referring to Africville.

Tattrie quoted a local activist in support of this allegation of exclusion. “The North End (of Halifax) received assistance in terms of rebuilding, but that was never afforded Africville,” Irvine Carvery, then president of the Africville Genealogical Society, was quoted as saying. Carvery explained. “When the Halifax Relief Commission first sat down to determine their ‘area of jurisdiction’ for providing assistance, they drew a circle on the map of Halifax. Africville was inside the circle. The next day, they redrew it, putting Africville outside of the area. They were asked the question, ‘Well, what about Africville?’ Their response was, ‘Well, Africville is someone else’s problem.’” Shocking, if true, presaging the geographic racism some claim motivated the mid-20th century destruction of the community.

The aftermath of the explosion photographed by Royal Navy Lt Victor Magnus which resulted in the deaths of 2,000 people.

Boundaries of the “devastated area” were adjusted by the city, the Halifax Relief Committee and later by its successor, the Relief Commission, but the process bore no relationship to that described by Carvery.

Altering slightly the area first identified by city council on the day of the explosion by defining the centre line of Gottingen Street, not the street itself, as the western boundary, the managing committee of the Relief Committee let a contract on Dec. 22, 1917 for clearing city blocks bounded by Wellington Barracks on the south, on the west by the centre line of Gottingen Street northward to the Bedford Basin, and eastward along the railway tracks. Charles and Laura Andrews’ home, termed “Africville-first part” by a Relief Committee inspector, was east of Gottingen Street and thus within the 1917 designated area.

The Relief Commission, created by an act of Nova Scotia’s Legislature on April 28, 1918, adjusted these boundaries, but again not as described by Tattrie and Carvery. On the last day of May 1918, five months after the original boundaries of the devastated area had been fixed, the southern border was moved northward beyond military property. Beginning now at Campbell Road, running west along the northern boundary of military property, north on Gottingen to Russell Street, the line then turned west to Robie Street. Following Robie north to Leeds Street, the boundary turned again, running eastward along the summit above the Bedford Basin until it met the railway tracks on the western shore of the Harbour Narrows.

Africville, situated west of Gottingen Street, was not within the devastated area by either the Dec. 6 or Dec. 22, 1917 definition. On the slopes below Leeds Street, the community was also beyond the May 31, 1918 boundaries. One might legitimately question this omission, but a glance at the accompanying map indicates there were a number of Halifax neighbourhoods adjacent to the “devastated area” that had sustained damage yet were also deemed beyond the boundaries. These areas, like Africville, received relief, but no wholesale reconstruction.

As dramatic as the Tattrie/Carvery account may be, there is no evidence to suggest it has any basis in fact. The documents are clear. There were no circles. Africville was not inside the devastated area one day and outside the next. Like the myth of a damage-free community, this Africville tale is shattered by documentary evidence.